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Sonos Arc support of AAC 5.1

  • December 11, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 30 views

Hello,

 

Just bought a Sonos Arc and found out that one of the streaming services on my Android TV provides home theater sound in AAC 5.1. After fiddling with the setup and looking on the Internet, I found that Sonos does not support AAC 5.1, and it is downmixed to PCM 2.0. Some questions:

1-  Are there any suggestions how to get AC3 to Sonos Arc? I’m now using an Android player capable of software transcoding AAC 5.1 to AC3, but it’s not an ideal solution. Maybe there are hardware transcoders capable of the task? Or a system-level utility for Android? Or maybe some TVs are capable of such transcoding? The only one that was suggested up to now is to use Nvidia Shield, which is told to be capable of transcoding everything to AC3. Surely something else can then do it as well?

2- What is the reason for Sonos to not support this format? Is there a chance we would get support at a later stage?

 

Thank you in advance!

Best answer by controlav

Transcode to a supported format:

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/supported-home-theater-audio-formats

Sonos do support AC3 (aka DD 5.1), on every home theater device they have ever produced. I mean my laserdisc player could emit that.

I am curious what streaming services supports AAC 5.1 though? And somehow don’t support mainstream audio formats?

1 reply

controlav
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  • Lead Maestro
  • Answer
  • December 12, 2025

Transcode to a supported format:

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/supported-home-theater-audio-formats

Sonos do support AC3 (aka DD 5.1), on every home theater device they have ever produced. I mean my laserdisc player could emit that.

I am curious what streaming services supports AAC 5.1 though? And somehow don’t support mainstream audio formats?